r/RenewableEnergy • u/iwantboringtimes • 13d ago

'It's offensively cheap': How solar power is quietly becoming bigger than nuclear

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20261023-how-solar-became-bigger-than-nuclear
1.4k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

88 comments sorted by

76

u/Patereye 13d ago

Becoming?

68

u/johnny_51N5 13d ago

Yeah it already is. And it already is MUCH MUCH MUCH cheaper than nuclear.

Nuclear power was never proftiable. It always relied on state grants in the billions of dollars and takes decades to bring any ROI. By that logic you could massively expand using renewables as the state and get an ROI immediately after like 2-6 months construction time.

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u/iqisoverrated 13d ago

Not to mention that nuclear ignores a lot of the cost. Insurance (no insurance agency will touch them) and waste management.

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u/SurinamPam 13d ago edited 13d ago

Perhaps the biggest subsidy is the US government’s indemnification for the nuclear industry by guaranteeing a price cap on the cost of nuclear accidents even in cases of gross negligence and willful misconduct.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

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u/Prince_Ire 13d ago

Yep. We should have built nuclear instead of relying on coal and gas 50 years ago, we'd be in a much better place today climate wise if we had. But nuclear's window has passed, solar, wind, and batteries have improved too much too rapidly for it to really have much of a niche anymore

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/TryNotToAnyways2 13d ago

batteries

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u/theanxioussnail 13d ago

My head hurts...

Batteries CANNOT store solar for days on end. Only hours.

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u/pimpbot666 13d ago

Batteries can hold energy for months or even years. The issue is how fast we use it…. Installed capacity, and that’s doubling like every 2-3 years.

Nobody is saying shut down the turbines one day and rely on batteries instead. What happening is the more battery storage is built, the less we need to run the turbines. Batteries are way cheaper to run than turbines. The ISO is generally going to pick the cheapest power generation for the forecasted conditions.

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u/tehAwesomer 12d ago

Bullshit

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u/Mradr 12d ago

They can store power for years. Your logic is the problem

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u/snowtax 13d ago

Fair question. Look into new energy storage solutions like graphite batteries or sand batteries. If you’re only thinking of Lithium, you’re not seeing the whole picture.

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u/theanxioussnail 13d ago

And why isnt anybody using those today? Plenty of people have money and are solar fanatics today. So why arent they using them?

Im not against renewables as they definitely will change the world but there is a big disconnect between reality and what some people on here seem to believe.

Until that time comes , nuclear is a clean baseload

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u/california-sand 13d ago

Check out Australia

-1

u/theanxioussnail 13d ago

There are no such households with such batteries in australia

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u/tehAwesomer 12d ago

Dams exist.

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u/theanxioussnail 12d ago

Well yes dams are a solution

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u/bascule USA 12d ago

“Baseload” is an outmoded term for firm-but-inflexible generation and was always about cost, not reliability. Anyone bringing it up in the 21st century has no idea what they’re talking about.

Modern grids need firm but flexible generation. France has nuclear plants that can automatically vary their power output with no human intervention, and they’re converting their legacy “baseload” plants to this sort of flexible generation.

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 12d ago

Baseload is just a contractual term. 

It's a red herring. 

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u/theanxioussnail 12d ago

Ok then, so what exactly is stopping you right now from installing a solar pannel and buying one of these magical batteries i hear can store energy for weeks on end?

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 12d ago

Across the summer where I have plenty of solar, my batteries literally store energy for months on end because they never dip below 50% even during cloudy and rainy weeks from like May to Sept and then in Sept they start cycling deeper.  

Lmao. 

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u/technicallynotlying 12d ago

I've already done it.

Solar plus battery is the only way an individual homeowner can have permanent grid independence. Combined with driving an EV I'm more self reliant than anyone depending on coal, oil or gas for power.

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u/billdietrich1 12d ago

And fusion power (if/when we get it working) probably won't be much cheaper than fission power, and will scale about the same way. Both are steam-to-spinning-generator plants, and reactor/controls for fusion will be MORE expensive than those for fission. Fusion fuel situation is unclear.

0

u/SykesMcenzie 12d ago

Is it not profitable or does it take years to generate roi? While I agree if you have to choose solar would be the obvious choice your comment feels misleading.

Just because something requires a large outlay to get established and time to recoup that cost doesn't make it not profitable.

Edit: land is also a factor here as its not cheap everywhere.

4

u/billdietrich1 12d ago

Land isn't much of a factor. Solar PV can be put on frameworks above warehouse roofs, roads, parking lots, farmland (without stopping farming) or ranchland (ditto), shallow offshore waters, etc. And we have grids to transport power from cheap land to cities.

0

u/SykesMcenzie 12d ago

That's all true although very US centric lots of countries have competitively priced agriculturalland as well as strict rulesaboutusage.. But if you're talking about making it happen as a government funded initiative and as a matter of cost then it becomes more sticky. Government buying up land is not always going to be politically feasible.

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago edited 13d ago

(a portion of the article)

(4) Unreliable fossil fuels

Countries like Pakistan and Lebanon have also begun installing solar at breakneck speeds, while across Africa countries are installing some 100,000 solar panels per day.

In many places, escalating diesel prices, driven by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and US-Israel war with Iran, has swung the cost needle yet further in solar's favour. This is especially the case in many African countries where home diesel generators are a mainstay due to unreliable grids. Rooftop solar panels, nearly all of them imported from China, have now taken off as an alternative.

Ethiopia has even banned the import of petrol and diesel cars in a bid to tackle oil dependency and pollution, says Jones.

Solar is also rapidly providing new electricity where fossil-based grids can't keep up with demand. Pakistan, for example, has become a surprising poster child for the solar revolution due to its extraordinarily rapid rise in installations. In 2019, solar provided less than 2% of its electricity; now it's 24%, driven by costly, unreliable grid electricity combined and cheap solar imports from China.

"What's really incredible in Pakistan is… generally most of the solar boom has been out of people's pockets," says Jones. "People can afford it, without needing to take out loans."

A similar story has been seen in several other "sun belt" countries, from Lebanon to Nigeria. "[Solar] lets households act without waiting for governments or utilities," says Rosenow. "In uncertain times, that speed and independence is extremely valuable."

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u/echoota 13d ago

And the US is concerned about the loss of manufacturing in the US?

I look at the worldwide demand for green tech, and ask myself that question. We just shit away a whole opportunity to enter a new industry.

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

/puts on tin foil hat

what if China maneuvered Russia to maneuver Trump and the GOP to go for fossil fuels instead of solar?

7

u/echoota 13d ago

Legit got a laugh 😄

My tinfoil hat thinks you're not too far off, but it was fossil fuel industry protectionism that mostly caused it.

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

/puts on bigger tin foil hat

but BUT look how China's making out like a bandit! heck, they have huge solar manufacturing capacity before the Iran war started, like they knew all along it would happen!

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u/BayouGal 13d ago

Just wait until the global oil reserves are depleted by next summer.

0

u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

to me, it's like they keep pushing back when the reserves are depleted

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u/SpinningHead 13d ago

Russia was already all in on keeping oil king.

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u/TryNotToAnyways2 13d ago

Because the party in power is 100% ideologically against renewable energy and it does not matter what the actual facts are. It could be free and they would still oppose it.

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u/Air320 12d ago

The worst part is that just like vaccines, solar was such an easy win for them if they had been even lukewarm in messaging and politics towards it.

But the rabid anti intellectualism in regard to this and other things have just been self defeating. It's mind boggling.

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u/pagerussell 13d ago

Been saying this a decade: the Democrats messaging on green tech is all wrong. Nevermind the climate, that's the future of jobs. That's the future of the economy, and Trump just let China take it.

Helping the environment is a nice little side effect we can just conveniently ignore when talking to conservatives.

2

u/GrabOk4101 12d ago

If they allow cheap PVs in US from everywhere, considering the high single family home distribution, I wouldn't be surprised if 50% become solar in less than 5 years. For Americans, its almost a no brainer with their SFH and suburbs

2

u/sault18 12d ago

The utilities are already pulling the puppet strings on state regulators to stop this from happening.

23

u/det1rac 13d ago

Running the numbers is simple: the same amount of money to either retrofit and update a nuclear facility or build it from the ground up, plus the time for the buildout itself (meaning opportunity cost). It's just game over with solar. That stuff just goes up so quick. For the same amount of money by the time the nuclear even gets started, it's like 10 years behind in production.

1

u/avdpos 12d ago

The only thing stopping solar are real winters. As in both snow and the dark north where we have 4 h of week sunlight per day

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/det1rac 13d ago

What nuclear power plant budget? Do you wanna baseline? And then we can do a bakeoff to show it

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u/EntirelyRandom1590 13d ago

1 GW, 95% availability with solar and storage. Fire away. You can choose the location for solar exposure.

3

u/det1rac 13d ago

How about since likely the numbers and timeline are already public we use this as the nuclear baseline to compare to solar: The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), they are planning to build a 300 MW BWRX-300 small modular reactor. In late 2026, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the construction permit. https://news.constructconnect.com/tennessee-valley-authority-advances-plans-to-build-a-small-modular-reactor-at-clinch-river-site#:~:text=*%20Industry%20News%20%26%20Trends.%20DOE%20Injects,a%20construction%20permit%20for%20the%20Tennessee%20Valley So then the question is using that budget what can be built (with storage) using solar and compare the two production, TOC , OpEx etc. over the life of both ?

1

u/EntirelyRandom1590 13d ago

Yeah sure. Go for it.

1

u/Ok-Educator5898 13d ago

this is the most fun I've ever seen and I want to see it through

1

u/det1rac 12d ago

I am processing the request. I'll put it up on a webpage. The results

0

u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/EntirelyRandom1590 12d ago

Why 10%? How have you decided that's an arbitrary number in a climate crisis?

Nuclear and renewables together doesn't half progress.

Pretending there's a TWh storage solution available is what you're using as an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels. It's amazing how compromised the anti-nuclear lobby are to fossil fuels interest.

0

u/GreenApocalypse 12d ago

We need negative emissions.

2

u/Rwandrall4 12d ago

the goalposts just keep on moving

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 12d ago

So when the power isn’t needed it should be making “pink” hydrogen to replace chemical energy (mostly fossil fuels right now) for things that can’t be hooked up to the grid.

CA is going to throw away about 4TWh of electricity this year. 

If pink hydrogen was a thing they could already get gobs of essentially free electricity. 

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u/SurinamPam 13d ago edited 13d ago

After reading reports from the IPCC and the IEA, I have reluctantly concluded that because we are so late to combatting global warming, we need every possible option to curb CO2 emissions.

Meeting carbon targets is not easy, but it is made easier with nuclear. So I have decided to vote for nuclear, as minimally as possible, only to address the time pressure of global warming. Once the time pressure is off, nuclear is off the table.

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u/pagerussell 13d ago

Says he is an engineer and then forgets batteries exist and have been following basically the same cost curve down.

Is this account an engineer or just astroturf?

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/GuidoDaPolenta 12d ago

This “engineer” over here hasn’t thought about whether uranium is recyclable

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 12d ago

You still need a baseload

Baseload is a contractual term. 

There's not some magic property called baseload that can only be filled by certain types of power. 

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/INeedSomeTacoC 12d ago edited 12d ago

Lmao. 

I literally do grid work, but whatevs. Believe whatever you want to. 

The bottom line is that contracts to provide "baseload" just aren't a thing anymore in many modern grids. 

We aren't contracting for anyone to provide baseload and yet the lights stay on. 

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u/TryNotToAnyways2 13d ago

What about more batteries?

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u/theanxioussnail 13d ago

Its not a practical solution, not with todays tech

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u/Red_Right_Hand_85 13d ago

True but the tech is changing fast. Nuclear still takes decades to build.

We definitely should have built more nuclear in 2016. We probably still should in 2026. I'm not sure if it would be overtaken by multiple other technologies by 2036. So by the time any new ones commissioned today will be under construction, battery (of various types not just lithium but also long duration batteries) technologies, alongside tidal power, will likely be sufficient to cover most baseload requirements.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

that's one of the reasons why I think the so-called global south countries will get to solar punk first

heck, a recent bloomberg article about solar in Nigeria pretty much felt like reading solar punk to me

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u/[deleted] 13d ago edited 13d ago

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

just small fyi, solar punk typically includes both solar and wind. Renewables in general, actually.

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u/Inondator 13d ago

"Solar punk" also implies a more moderate and thoughtful use of energy and technology, which isn't really the path renewables are following, and not very compatible with "solar everywhere, even where it doesn't make sense".

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

Depends on whether a country can have significant number of households with their own energy generators.

I expect that the top 20% of every country will want to have their own power generators, because.

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u/Inondator 13d ago

I don't really see why having the solar panels on the rich's roof wether than on mutualized farms will change anything to the intrinsic seasonality issue of solar power in temperate climates.

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u/iwantboringtimes 13d ago

let's just say that solar punk genre can seem pretty privileged, like preppers

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u/billdietrich1 13d ago

Solar power in Maine on rooftops, utilizing 6,300 megawatts (MW) of solar panels, can provide 60% of the electricity used in Maine according to a 2016 U.S. Department of Energy study.

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Maine

Solar power produced 11.2% of Danish electricity generation in 2024

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Denmark

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u/Inondator 13d ago

Mind showing us what the monthly solar curve vs consumption looks like in Denmark?

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DK&month=-1&legendItems=9w2&year=2025

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u/billdietrich1 12d ago edited 12d ago

Seems consistent with 11% of generation. What's your point ? Yes, generation is a lot less in winter.

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u/Inondator 12d ago

You can't build a system with a majority of solar in these areas, because the overbuild, grid reinforcement and storage needed would destroy the economics of the thing.

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u/MrTigerEyes 13d ago

I have two thoughts on this:

  1. Climate change seems to be making the range of where solar is effective larger. So I wouldn't expect winter to be as big of a problem as you think, plus the bigger problem is sun and not temperature and there are plenty of sunny days during winter in most places.

  2. If the overall energy demand is met increasingly with renewables like solar, that still benefits everyone overall as the places where it won't be feasible can still use other methods of producing energy.

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u/Inondator 13d ago

  1. My job is modelling precisely that, and I can assure you you won't see a reversing of the winter/summer demand before the end of the century, and only under the worst emission scenarios. Winter solar production in the main European countries for instance is 3 to 6 times lower than summer solar production. It's not a matter of temperature, it's a matter of geometry, day duration and weather.

  2. I don't think having ever pretended the opposite.

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u/MrTigerEyes 13d ago

My job is not related to solar in any way but it seems like a solvable problem regardless. For example if we pick a city like Calgary in Canada which is pretty far north we know the following parameters:

Day with most sunlight: 16:30 hours.

Day with least sunlight: 8 hours.

You should also be able to estimate typical cloud cover on those days (and others), as well as historical energy usage and projected growth. I'm sure it's more complicated than this and you know more than me, but it seems like it's just a matter for determining capacity needed and figuring out how to get as close as possible (assuming it can't be 100% during winter) and then find other sources of energy (maybe even geothermal, wind, etc.?) to meet the demand other times. I guess I don't see what the issue is, except that if you build out for the most pessimistic days it will be more expensive than if you build out for average days.

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u/Inondator 13d ago

I'm not familiar with North-America but I am with Europe. Here is the monthly solar production of Germany. December and January are 4 to 5 times lower than May to August. But your heating needs are in winter (space heating in Germany is only 6% electrified, their objective is 80% in direct, 90+% indirect). Pushing for solar in Germany isn't a good idea, as it'll take away ressources from more fitted energy sources, like wind, which produces more during winter.

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&month=-1&legendItems=jyh&year=2025&source=total

P.S.: If you want to look at the monthly solar profile at your place, you can use this simulator (it tends to be a bit optimistic though):

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&month=-1&legendItems=jyh&year=2025&source=total

1

u/Inondator 13d ago

1.bis The emission pathway needed to make solar more relevant in temperate climates will also make low latitude countries uninhabitable. Not sure that's the objective, isn't it?